How could I create pagination in php?

Question

Say that I had a database containing 1000s of records and I wanted to return just 10 per page. What would be the best way to go about this?

In my head, the logic I would use would be to divide the array length by 10 and save it as a variable such as $pageresults

Somehow I would need to create a loop that looped through the results and displayed every 10 results ($pageresults)

I know I would need to use a GET variable but have hit a wall. Can anyone point me in the right direction.

I know the logic seems simple. Find the array length, divide by results by page and then loop through every 10 on each page.

But I can't seem to translate it into code. If anyone could help me, I would be forever grateful.

Answer 1 · 2015-06-26T17:20:02Z

June 26, 2015 5:20pm

I suggest you take the building a simple web app courses in the PHP library. They build the site, including pagination as you want, refactor it in the second course, then add the data to a database in the third. Exactly what you want to ultimately do. This is the code on pagination from the course. These are from multiple files.

<?php

try {
    $db = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=shirts4mike","root","");
    $db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE,PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    $db->exec("SET NAMES 'utf8mb4'");
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo "Could not connect to the database.";
    exit;
}
?>

<?php
/*
 * Returns a specified subset of products, based on the values received,
 * using the order of the elements in the array .
 * @param    int             the position of the first product in the requested subset 
 * @param    int             the position of the last product in the requested subset 
 * @return   array           the list of products that correspond to the start and end positions
 */
function get_products_subset($positionStart, $positionEnd) {

        $offset = $positionStart - 1;   
        $rows = $positionEnd - $positionStart + 1;
        require(ROOT_PATH . "inc/database.php");

        try {
            $results = $db->prepare("
                    SELECT name, price, img, sku, paypal
                    FROM products
                    ORDER BY sku
                    LIMIT ?, ?"); //Two numbers are offset, then number returned.
            $results->bindParam(1,$offset,PDO::PARAM_INT);
            $results->bindParam(2,$rows,PDO::PARAM_INT);
            $results->execute();
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            echo "Data could not be retrieved form the database.  get_products_subset";
            exit;
        }

    $subset = $results->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
    return $subset;
}

?>

<?php
// retrieve current page number from query string; set to 1 if blank
    if (empty($_GET["pg"])) {
        $current_page = 1;
    } else {
        $current_page = $_GET["pg"];
    }
    // set strings like "frog" to 0; remove decimals
    $current_page = intval($current_page);

    $total_products = get_products_count();
    $products_per_page = 8;
    $total_pages = ceil($total_products / $products_per_page);

    // redirect too-large page numbers to the last page
    if ($current_page > $total_pages) {
        header("Location: ./?pg=" . $total_pages);
    }

    // redirect too-small page numbers (or strings converted to 0) to the first page
    if ($current_page < 1) {
        header("Location: ./");
    }

    // determine the start and end shirt for the current page; for example, on
    // page 3 with 8 shirts per page, $start and $end would be 17 and 24
    $start = (($current_page - 1) * $products_per_page) + 1;
    $end = $current_page * $products_per_page;
    if ($end > $total_products) {
        $end = $total_products;
    }

    $products = get_products_subset($start,$end);
?>

Not all of the comments appear to be updated with the addition of the database.

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How could I create pagination in php?

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